FCC proposes spectrum sharing, as mobile carriers give wary eye

On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission made good on its September promise to free up 100 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band, mainly to be used for “small cell” sites.

The range, between 3550 and 3650 MHz, is currently used for United States Navy radar operations and covers approximately 60 percent of the American population. The new plan will let mobile phone companies share that spectrum with federal users.

The FCC says that the 100 MHz swath will be divided into three tiers, the top for incumbent government and military users. The second and third, meanwhile, will be divvied up amongst “critical use facilities,” and “General Authorized Access,” respectively.

“A spectrum access system, incorporating a geo-location enabled dynamic database, would govern access to the 3.5 GHz band,” the FCC said in a statement.

"We look forward to working with the Commission on the 3.5 GHz proceeding," said Chris Guttman-McCabe, a vice president at CTIA, the wireless industry’s trade group, in a statement. "While this spectrum is not part of the 300 MHz that the FCC has identified for allocation for mobile flexible use before 2015, we are interested to see how the proceeding develops, and how the band ultimately can be used to support the provision of mobile broadband."

Spectrum 'sharing', that is to say, all last mile spectrum, should be in the hands of a couple of competing entities - not the Carriers.

the last mile spectrum that is currently available is not well utilized. Loading is poor and there's multiple hand sets - none of which differ in any significant way now that LTE is in place.

So there's no 'innovation' in the market, simply consolidation around the LTE standards. This means that one phone could be built that runs all of the spectrum. Economies of scale would apply.

One set of last mile frequencies could be more efficiently loaded in near real-time.

By taking this approach, comsumers benefit, there is no spectrum crisis and any new spectrum that is allotacted to last mile can easily be integrated. Carrier costs go down, duplicate towers go away, duplicate last mile charges for under utilized resources vanish, and overall the efficiency of the last mile economy operate much better.

Be it 3.5 or another spectrum slice, the solutions are clear. Optimize for maximum usage, report utilization publicly, and forget trying to lock down customers into one 2 year contract, when that carrier does not have a build out. Today's approach is a nightmare for Americans.

Tomorrow, driving into any town with a new model handset, you'd be able to get coverage, speed, reliability of a totally merged last mile.

None of the carriers have that expertise and there fore should line up to a last miles expert new team.

Pardon my ignorance, but if this spectrum is used by naval radar, would that limit it's use in coastal regions to avoid possible interference?

Radar tends to be powerful and directional. So when it passes in your general direction, expect everything in that band - and neighbouring bands, if the guard band isn't big enough - to basically be obliterated. Think for a second that we actually have to harden the electronics of aircraft against radar. (Not to mention that most navel electronics are similarly hardened!)

This may or may not limit the use of this band in costal areas. Will you be able to use this band in San Francisco? Probably not. But you could probably get away with it in Portland.

Right up against the coast, you're probably not going to see much use…but 3500Mhz doesn't travel all that far. How far inland you have to be before you can start throwing up cell sites really depends on the details of the Naval radar itself.

I think this is a great idea but only if they limit all 5G spectrum as shared spectrum. This means that if any spectrum in the future is used toward 5G technology it must be shared by all carriers. Of course this unlikely will prevent phones from being used on other carriers, it certainly won't stop the 1000% markup on data plans, and overall pretty much nothing will be changed.

I mean do we really want the ( chump change ) that allows the exclusive rights to the spectrum? The abuse we have suffered as customers isn't worth it.

3.5GHz? Wow, that's a horrible band space for cellular. Maybe that's why it's being reserved for "small sites" Also, sounds like they're not sharing the 100MHz, only the bottom of 3 tiers of it. Yes, the rest will still be cellualar use as well, but only for government devices on a private network, so carriers really won;t be messing with that.

3.5GHz? Wow, that's a horrible band space for cellular. Maybe that's why it's being reserved for "small sites" Also, sounds like they're not sharing the 100MHz, only the bottom of 3 tiers of it. Yes, the rest will still be cellualar use as well, but only for government devices on a private network, so carriers really won;t be messing with that.

3.5ghz has apparently been used in a few locations globally for wimax already; making it closer to a standard band than most of the lightly used govt spectrum being looked at for reassignment to mobile use. Lower frequencies would be better for cellular usage; but the same is true for most other uses. As a result there's very little available there to be freed up. ~80% of what the FCC has on its list of reassignment candidates is above current widely used frequencies.

Pardon my ignorance, but if this spectrum is used by naval radar, would that limit it's use in coastal regions to avoid possible interference?

On page 12 of this PDF there is a map of 3.5GHz exclusion zones. Basically all of the western states bordering the pacific, along with all the eastern seaboard states, and all the gulf states.

Looking at the size of those exclusion zones and the number or large cities they cover; my thoughts are that keeping all 100mhz together as a single block and using it for rural broadband instead of extra phone bandwidth might be the best way to go. Having to mount an external antenna isn't a major problem for fixed wireless and a 100mhz block combined with low population densities should allow for significantly higher per user caps than with current 3/4g options.

Pardon my ignorance, but if this spectrum is used by naval radar, would that limit it's use in coastal regions to avoid possible interference?

On page 12 of this PDF there is a map of 3.5GHz exclusion zones. Basically all of the western states bordering the pacific, along with all the eastern seaboard states, and all the gulf states.

Looking at the size of those exclusion zones and the number or large cities they cover; my thoughts are that keeping all 100mhz together as a single block and using it for rural broadband instead of extra phone bandwidth might be the best way to go. Having to mount an external antenna isn't a major problem for fixed wireless and a 100mhz block combined with low population densities should allow for significantly higher per user caps than with current 3/4g options.

It certainly would, though it'd make 150 mhz available for the purpose. There's hardware out for this already, as 3650-3700 is currently licensed for this sort of use.

3.5GHz? Wow, that's a horrible band space for cellular. Maybe that's why it's being reserved for "small sites" Also, sounds like they're not sharing the 100MHz, only the bottom of 3 tiers of it. Yes, the rest will still be cellualar use as well, but only for government devices on a private network, so carriers really won;t be messing with that.

You have to get over this mindset that every piece of spectrum released is immediately the solution to all problems. There are many situations where short distance cellular service on an additional band will help out substantially. Examples include- stadiums, conventions, airports; basically anywhere people congregate in large amounts of small areas

- campuses (college, corporate) where you can slap down a microcell that picks up most of the local traffic, leaving the macrocell covering the area open for more dispersed traffic

- likewise for crowded apartment building.

Yes, this is not a "solution" for creating large cells that cover rural areas. So what? The issues in creating cells that cover rural areas are ECONOMIC. They are not technical, they are not related to frequency allocation. Meanwhile, the solution for crowded cities has many moving parts, but a large part of the answer is an micro-cell underlay, situated at dense hot spots, below the macrocell overlay; and 3.5MHz is a pretty good frequency for this task.